With their steamy stories and doe-eyed covers, paperback romance novels have long been the territory of women readers.
But the genre -- which often features a heroine who must push aside her impulses upon first being attracted to the story's hero -- is getting a fresh approach from a surprise new author: 73-year-old Ron Bergerson, a retired technical illustrator who lives in Burnsville.
Bergerson last year penned his first novel, "Midsummer Waltz," and it was published through Eloquent Books.
The story, told mostly from the point of view of its male hero, Erik Johnson, revolves around Johnson's romance with a second- grade teacher, Anne Marie Lindquist, after they fall madly in love at a community dance in western Wisconsin. The couple must resist pressure from Anne Marie's father, a big-shot banker who thinks Johnson's job as a technical illustrator is not of high enough station.
Although Bergerson said he won't receive book sales figures until April -- and even then he won't know the gender of his buyers -- at least anecdotally, he believes most of his readers are men.
He points to the book's Amazon.com reviewers, who are all men, including Bob Wilson, 72, of Lakeville. He read Bergerson's book, which he said was the first romance novel he's ever picked up.
"Oh, I got a real kick out of that book," said Wilson, a retired pharmaceutical rep for Eli Lilly. "He kind of paints a picture of his characters, and during the passionate scenes, it's not too filthy. Well, except for that one headache scene ..."
Jason Paul, 39, of Elko New Market, liked the fact that the hero of the book -- a salt-of-the-earth Lutheran -- seemed like a regular Joe and not a ripped Fabio.
"I haven't read too many romance novels, but I thought it was kind of an everyday life story," said Paul, who handles part documentation for Toro. "They seemed like people I would want to hang out with."
According to the Romance Writers of America, 90.5 percent of romance novel readers are women, and the vast majority of authors in the genre are women writing from a woman's point of view.
"It's very hard to understate the importance of women in our genre," said Allison Kelley, executive director of the Romance Writers of America, a trade group based in Houston. "That said, in the past couple of years, I have noticed more and more men showing up at our conventions, so there is some change happening there."
Kelley noted that there's a history of male romance writers penning their work under female names. She also noted that several couples write under a single pen name such as Tori Kerrington -- really the married couple Lori and Tony Karayianni. But even those books are mostly written from the heroine's point of view.
Bergerson hopes his work -- and the work of other male authors -- helps lead to a change not only in the romance fiction category, but also in how women view their male counterparts.
"I think men may be more romantic at heart than women give us credit for," said Bergerson -- noting that nothing sours up a man like "going too many years without getting enough kissin'."
Alyssa Ford is a Minneapolis freelance writer.
